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Arthurian Tales in Brittany and Burgundy (Notes: 12)

"See that lady, Arthur? Never go near her; never trust anyone who lives in a lake" "That is rather close minded of you, Merlin." --A fictional exchange.

Mary de France: it is a name which appears
at the end of a collection of stories called The Fables. She says that she is from France, thus signaling that
she was writing outside of France. Her writings in The Fables may have been inspired by Aesop’s fables. Additionally,
she wrote the twelve lais, which were poetic narratives. It is understood that
Mary de France was a highly educated woman whose audience was cosmopolitan in
composition.

As the twelve lais that she wrote, two are
overtly Arthurian. ‘The Honeysuckle’ and ‘Lon Voul.’ (The honeysuckle features
a heavy intrusion of another story independent of the Arthurian aspect called ‘Tristin
and Isolde.’)

In ‘Lon Voul,’ King Arthur is a facilitator
instead of a principal actor. The story is about a knight who, after whining
and pouting, runs off into the forest whereupon he meets a beautiful fairy who
agrees to be with him if he can keep their relationship a secret. He agrees but
is forced to reveal the nature of his relationship when Queen Guinevere attempts
to seduce him. What transpires next is a series of encounters with fairies in a
tense courtly setting before the fairy herself emerges who rides off with the
knight to Avalon, never to be seen again.

Mary’s ethos in these stories is one of
luxury and love found outside of marriage; knightly ability, the magical, the
exotic, and the noble feature as supporting roles.

Because of the incomplete nature of Chretien
de Tray’s Arthurian Romances, they fired the imagination of the medieval public
and everyone seemingly had a conclusion or alteration of their own to add. Some
researchers have called this period of experimentation as an “industry
industry.” After Chretien, the grail story will start to morph in the French
tradition. It will go from a magical serving dish, to a holy vessel, and then
into the Holy Grail. Eventually, and due in part to the nature of the French “inter-laced”
texts, each newcomer adds new content regarding Arthur’s knights and what
happens is an explosion of content, bloating the legend and transforming it.

One major preoccupation in the Perceval
texts, for instance, is genealogy and the attempt to reconcile the religious and
the secular.

Sometimes after the year 1200, Robert de
Bon, a French writer from Burgundy, composes Arthurian texts which heavily
feature the Holy Grail. These texts are: “The Joseph ta Emeth,” “The Mackland,”
and a third text which is simply called [the Perceval text] among its many
names.

Before we can proceed, however, we have to
understand an idea called ‘Transfer of Rule.’ Essentially, this means that it
is a history unbroken and passed down from king to king, from East to West. It
is used in Monmouth’s history when he traces England’s history to foundational
historic events, thus providing England with a sense of purpose and status. In
effect, Robert does this for the religious aspects of the Grail stories by
associating it with Christ’s blood and Joseph bringing the cup into the West.

In short, Joseph is instructed by angels to
build a second table, one which is in the image from the table from the last
supper. It is said that the table’s Trinitarian promises will be fulfilled upon
the building of a third table, i.e., the Roundtable. Robert, however, also
builds on Merlin, who obtains his magical powers from his mother in-womb after
she is raped by a demon; though he obtained his powers from the devil, he is
able to retain them by fighting for Chrstianity. However, Robert ignores Gawain’s
elements from Chretien’s original text and writes Perceval as triumphant while
concluding the story, thus re-writing the open ended defeat of the original
fisher king plot.

As a writer, however, Robert’s octoslavic
style was considered poor. People were more interested in Robert’s stories—their
plots and narratives—more than in his actual style. Robert was important for
so-called ‘gisters,’ or people who made texts more accessible to the mass
public by giving people the ‘gist’ of the story.

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Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.